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About Vorknkx

Mentioning a source port is not a problem at all - I didn't think about them at first because the DOS versions are still the ones I have (statistically) played the most (and I suppose the same is true for most of the older Doomers)... this could change after a few years, though ;)
So if you are a part of the newer generation and have worked primarily with source ports - that's a perfectly acceptable answer too. In fact, it will give us a more precise picture.

I was thinking about this as I was looking over my DOOM archives... which game and what version is the one that you've played the most over the years?
(This can be measured as total hours played or as number of years when you had this version and played it regularly.)
For me, it would be Doom 1, v1.666 - the very definition of classic. It was my primary version of D1 for about 10 years, until I finally got The Ultimate Doom. Overall, I've played Doom 2 and Final Doom less than D1.
Even today, when I feel super-nostalgic, I fire up the old 1.666 in DOSBox. This is what gives me the purest feel of DOOM :)
What about you, fellow marines?

A few years ago I got in the mood to try something new and I turned my sight towards the Aliens versus Predator franchise, more specifically - AvP 2 (developed by Monolith, released in 2001).
As I played and explored the game, I started to notice a surprisingly large number of similarities with Doom 3. In fact, it alsmost seems as if D3 was heavily inspired by AvP 2 in many ways.
Here are some of the greatest similarities:
1. Both games take place within a colony on a distant planet (Mars / LV-1201), ran by an immoral mega-coproration (UAC / Weyland-Yutani).
2. In both games, the colony is invaded by a hostile force (demons / xenomorphs) and its occupants are wiped out. Colony is damaged beyond any hope for salvage.
3. Both games have a space marine as the main protagonist (note: AvP also has a Predator and an Alien player character, though we could consider them "secondary" protagonists).
4. Both games feature a villain who is an evil/mad scientist with a German-sounding name (Dr. Betruger / Dr. Eisenberg).
4a. Also, both games feature a high-ranking military character, who turns evil and is fought at some point in the game (Sergeant Kelly / General Rykov).
5. In both games, the "evil scientist" is revealed as non-human in the ending (Betruger turns out to be a demon / Eisenberg is an android).
6. Both games rely heavily upon finding various bits of "intel" (e-mails, personal logs, memos, etc.) to fill in various story-related details. The difference is that D3 allows you to collect those (in your PDA), whereas in AvP 2 you can only read them on the spot.
7. Both games feature the ruins of an ancient civilisation on the planet, which are somehow related to the invading bad guys. In both games, the final battle takes place within or close to ancient ruins.
8. In both games there are numerous hints of immoral and/or illegal activities taking place within the colony (with or without the knowledge of the mega-corp).
9. In both games, the "evil scientist" is being investigated by company officials in the early stages of the plot (Betruger by Elliot Swann / Eisenberg by unnamed female Weyland-Yutani auditor).
10. In both games, scientists have performed research and/or experiments on the invaders (experiments on demons at Delta labs / xenomorph experiments at the Forward Observation Pods).
11. Both games end with one (or very few survivors) barely escaping alive, abandoning the colony to its fate...
12. The story of the expansion pack revolves around an ancient artifact that everyone wants to get their hands on (the Primitive / unnamed ancient artifact).
I could probably name some more, but these are the one that come to my mind right now... if you've played AvP 2, you might have felt these similarities too.

Doom has less differentiation between "regular" enemies and bosses than, for example, Wolf 3D, where certain bosses end the episode on being killed (regardless of circumstances), and all of them in general follow slightly different rules than regular enemies.
It's all about the situation - you can put a Cuberdemon (or a Spider) in any level you wish, yet you have to keep in mind that their death causes certain effects (especially on E2M8, E3M8 and E4M8).
Same goes for Baron of Hell.
I think Quake is in the same situation, though there are a few special cases to consider, like the special function for killing the first boss (Chthon) being specifically hardcoded to work only on E1M7, or the final boss requiring a telefrag to kill.

The entire TNT feels like this for me - bitter, melancholic, brooding, distant, introspective.
Plutonia is a savage battle for survival, while TNT is more like a journey through the barren fields of your tortured soul.
As far as I remember, TNT's story states that the UAC survived Hell on Earth and continued its operations (on Io), whereas in Plutonia, the UAC is pretty much gone and is re-founded under strict government control.
That's why I consider them to be two alternative (and unrelated) storylines.

For me, Doom's abstract nature is one of its best aesthetic features - video games are meant to be a distraction from our trivial lives, and thus less realistic games could actually give us more fun.
When I play games with more realistic environments, I start to feel bored pretty quickly. Doom, on the other hand, keeps my imagination stimulated and hungry for more.
Regarding DOOM2 - we could see it as an anti-utopia of sorts. It does seem pretty rough and cold for a futuristic world. In fact, I talked about this subject in one of my fan fiction pieces:
"Humanity had always had great expectation for the future – everyone eagerly waited for the time when clean and bright cities would replace the cold concrete and rusty metal of the past. Reality, as always, delivered a rude awakening – progress came at a cost. There seemed to be more backbreaking work and toil for everyone, regardless of all the marvelous technological advancements. The spaceport and all the amazing new factories surely looked pretty, yet there always were little muddy holes filled with filth and soot. Humanity had reached for the stars, and yet was still unable to escape from its dirty roots."

I think it was deliberately made vague, in order to make the player wonder (and make his own interpretations).
I, for one, think the Marine passed out (or perhaps even died) from exhaustion after the fight and was simply dreaming.
...
By the way, I've always thought that Icarus was, in a way, the sequel to Evilution... probably because its plot also has something to do with a spaceship. And speaking of speaceships, I've often thought that the last levels of Evilution (25 - 30) take place aboard that demonic ship.

History lesson mode: Enabled
This is what the gaming market was like back in the day - you'd release a shareware game with episodes (e.g. Wolf 3D and Doom), and if it turned out to be successful, you'd also release a "commercial" game, which is not split into episodes (Spear of Destiny and Doom II, respectively).
The Blake Stone series followed the same pattern - shareware first game (Aliens of Gold) and a commercial sequel (Planet Strike).
The Doom Bible also describes the game as having six episodes and a commercial sequel.

While I've never seen the official Doom board game, back at elementary school my friends and I used to play an improvised version of a "Doom board game", which was mostly inspired by Monopoly.
Of course, you don't get to buy ordinary sites in this game, but rather demonic places (slaughterhouses, evil temples, weapon factories, haunted tombs, etc.). It was fun :)